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Building my first SFF

C

Canadian in Berlin

Gawd
Joined
Sep 8, 2007
Messages
697
Hi,

I've been trolling the SFF forum to try and get a feel for things, but I'm still really unsure where to start. My main worry is compatibility with Ubuntu.

I'm building a new comp for the wife and I'm sick of her having this massive case thats annoyingly placed, so I want to go SFF.

It needs to be fairly powerful as she'll be using Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop in a Virtual machine fairly often. I'm thinking a quad-core and 4 GB of RAM for a starting point.

I mostly need suggestions as to good Motherboards and Cases that would let me have the Quad-Core +4GB...

I've ruled out ITX only due to Ubuntu compatibility issues with the motherboards available in my region.

Does anyone have any good suggestions? Integrated graphics should be fun, I could always grab a cheap video card if needed though. (*cough* excuse to give her my 8800 and get a GTX....)

Anyone have any suggestions of a good Linux/Ubuntu supported Mobo?
 
Please answer the following questions so that we have a better idea of what you want exactly:
Danny Bui said:
If you're gonna ask us to build/list a PC for you or seek advice about a build, please answer all of the following questions:

1) What will you be doing with this PC? Gaming? Photoshop? Web browsing? etc
2) What's your budget? Are tax and shipping included?
3) Where do you live?
4) What exact parts do you need for that budget? CPU, RAM, case, etc. Please be very specific.
5) If reusing any parts, what parts will you be reusing? Please be especially specific about the power supply. List make and model.
6) Will you be overclocking?
7) What size monitor do you have or plan to have?
8) When do you plan on building/buying the PC?
9) What features do you need in a motherboard? RAID? Firewire? Crossfire or SLI support? etc.

By answering these questions you help us help you build a PC that's of better quality, better performing, cheaper or all of the above.
Click to expand...
 
1) What will you be doing with this PC? Gaming? Photoshop? Web browsing? etc

See my post above... Photo editing (Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop within a VM), some Kedit...

2) What's your budget? Are tax and shipping included?

Quite flexible, 5-600 euros (800-1000 dollars)

3) Where do you live?
Berlin, hence the name

4) What exact parts do you need for that budget? CPU, RAM, case, etc. Please be very specific.

Mobo and Case are what I'm looking for suggestions for... CPU: Quad Core (low-end) RAM: 4GB (can pick myself)

5) If reusing any parts, what parts will you be reusing? Please be especially specific about the power supply. List make and model.

Possibly one of the harddrives if it passed the error checking thats running today

6) Will you be overclocking?
Probably not

7) What size monitor do you have or plan to have?
19"

8) When do you plan on building/buying the PC?
This month

9) What features do you need in a motherboard? RAID? Firewire? Crossfire or SLI support? etc.
Support for a quad-core and 4GB of RAM, good compatibility with Ubuntu,
 
You don't seem to have very high demands in terms of hardware. If you don't OC (even if you do OC, as long as it is some mild OCing), you don't have to change the CPU fan which means that you won't have restrictions on the case you can use. If you want small, you could go for the Antec NSK 3480 (which comes with a decent 380W PSU). Small case which will restrict you in one way only: the number of HDs you can put in there. I think 2 is the max, which may or may not be a problem.
For the MOBO: I have no UBUNTU experience, but I'd say that any mobo from 80€ (maybe even cheaper) onward will have support for quads and 4GB of RAM. From the looks of it you don't really require a high-grade GPU, so you could either get a nVidia 9300 chipset mobo without a discrete graphics card or go for a cheap G31/G33 mobo and add a HD4670 for example.

Does that help?
 
A bit, as I mentioned above, the demands on this box will be quite light as the only demanding tasks the wife does are photo editing (hence the requirement for a quadcore and the ram).

I suppose my best bet as far as the motherboard goes would be to post on the ubuntu forums, but I know theres quite a few linux users on the hard forums as well.

2 harddrives would be fine, but I found that case to be somewhat ugly. :mad:
 
Canadian in Berlin said:
2 harddrives would be fine, but I found that case to be somewhat ugly. :mad:
Click to expand...

I see where you coming from, it's quite blocky, but in truth it looks (a bit) better in real life. As far as ubuntu is concerned, is it just that you absolutely refuse to have Windows in your home (I could understand that, I am a Mac user) or is it that you are really going to use ubuntu on that computer?
 
I use windows, its easier. She uses windows in a virtual machine, but prefers linux for day to day work. Therefore its gotta be ubuntu.
 
Canadian in Berlin said:
I use windows, its easier. She uses windows in a virtual machine, but prefers linux for day to day work. Therefore its gotta be ubuntu.
Click to expand...

Fair enough. That's pretty unusual: if I said ubuntu to my half, she'd probably think it's an exotic destination in the south pacific or something. :)
 
My mom heard good things about linux and I walked her through an install over the phone (my first experience with ubuntu was via phone 8000km away). Seeing as how the box (pre-made) came iwth linux originally, it was a snap except for our addition of a wireless card, which we worked through. She's had 0 problems and no viruses and is happy.

Linux is great (when it actually works and is actually compatible) for non-gamers. (as long as they have somebody to maintain it for them).
 
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